Aziraphale and the Green Eyed Monster
by Igorina
Summary: Angels aren't supposed to experience envy. Unforuntately for Aziraphale 'supposed to' just isn't going to cut it.


Disclaimer: I own neither Crowley, Aziraphale or St. James Park.

A/N: Not much to say about this one. Just another short, silly ficlet that popped into my head at an inopportune moment.

Angels weren't supposed to be capable of envy. This fact was of absolutely no comfort whatsoever to Aziraphale, who had been stewing in a veritable quagmire of low grade jealousy for over three days. He'd had his suspicious for months, of course. It was the way Crowley had been avoiding him. The demon had suddenly started ignoring him, making lame, and sometimes rather bizarre, excuses for not turning up to previously organised engagements - Aziraphale was pretty certain that house plants couldn't get bronchitis - and leaving the angel's increasingly worried phone calls unanswered. On the one occasion that the angel had turned up uninvited at his flat, Crowley had refused to look him in the eye, and muttered something about being bogged down with paperwork.

It wasn't however, until Aziraphale had started to frequent Crowley's favourite spots around the capital - in what was most definitely and emphatically not a less than subtle attempt to bump into him accidentally on purpose - that he started to suspect that the demon was seeing somebody else.

It wasn't sexual, or even romantic, jealousy as such. He had long been accustomed to storming into the midst of depraves orgies, with the righteous intention of pouring a couple of metaphorical - or on a few notable occasions non-metaphorical - buckets of cold water on the proceedings; only to find the demon unashamedly entwined with several attractive humans, in all manner of physically improbably positions. You couldn't really have a relationship with a demon if you objected to them getting up to things with humans. No this was far far worse. Crowley had, if appearances were to be believed, found another immortal entity to take to The Ritz. It was almost too much for Aziraphale to bear. After over six thousand years of being the only supernatural being constantly present in Crowley's life, he didn't really feel that it was it was right or fair that he should be brushed off in favour of some pretty, auburn-haired, male shaped thing, wearing what looked suspiciously like a beige caftan.

When he'd first spotted them walking out of Harvey Nichols together, on Monday afternoon, he had kept his distance from the pair; worried that Crowley and his new companion would sense his presence, and form some ridiculous notion that he was purposefully following them around. On Wednesday evening however; after quite coincidentally spotting them leaving The Ivy, he had grown bolder: walking thirty meters behind them, until the pair reached the demon's Mayfair flat. Both had been too wrapped up in whatever it was they were discussing, to sense that an unhappy, and at this point frankly obsessive, angel was trailing behind them. Any comforting thoughts that this was just another of Crowley's superiors from the pit here to collect the 'Annual Souls Secured Report' had been cruelly blown away.

That night Aziraphale seethed in front of The Great Antiques Hunt, and thought uncharitable thoughts about badly attired, auburn-haired demon thieves.

Things came to a head on Thursday morning, when Aziraphale saw them by the duck pond in St. James Park. This time it wasn't a pathetically contrived coincidence. The angel really had just wanted a nice walk to clear his head.

Once again they were too deep in conversation to notice the tweed clad angel who was now furtively watching them from behind an oak tree.

As Crowley absent-mindedly through a stale piece of panini at the awaiting avians, Aziraphale began to notice something very odd about his companion. The aura radiating from the caftan wearing red head was not diabolic in nature. It was then that the awful truth hit him. This was no demon. Crowley was feeding the ducks with another angel. The bastard.

Heartbroken and inwardly seething; Aziraphale decided to deal with the situation the best way he knew how: in the manner befitting of an upright and emotionally constipated Englishman.

"Lovely weather we're having today gentlemen, isn't it?"

Crowley yelped.

The other angel suddenly looked very ill.

"Aziraphale… what a surprise I… er… I can explain everything."

"Really?" said Aziraphale, in tones of calculated neutrality. "You have an explanation?"

Crowley looked around desperately for a few second, clearly searching for inspiration. "Well, if you could give me five minutes to think of one."

Aziraphale said nothing and folded his arms; a gesture that was intended to be mildly threatening, but really just looked a tad prissy. There was, he decided, a certain perverse satisfaction to be derived from watching the unfaithful demon and his angelic floozy of a companion squirm.

"Look we might as well tell him," said Crowley, eventually. "He'll find out eventually. He always does."

The red headed angel just stared at the ground.

"You see the thing is…. the reason why…. Oh, fuck it. Zeliel here is thinking of falling and they gave me the job of persuading him to take the big leap, so to speak. I told them that you'd catch on pretty quickly, but you know what they're like down there; not a scrap of common sense between the whole bloody lot of them."

Aziraphale's eyes widened in realisation. It all made sense now: the uncomfortable avoidance, the strange behaviour, the hideous beige caftan. Crowley hadn't been cheating, he'd been corrupting. Aziraphale didn't think that he had ever felt more relieved, or for that matter, more guilty about being relieved, in his entire existence.

"I just don't think I can take working under Michael any more," said the angel now identified as Zeliel, in a small voice. "He's just so… so righteous all the time. It's driving me mad."

"My dear, you do realise that now I know about all of this, I really must put a stop to it," said Aziraphale, unable to stop himself from beaming like an idiot.

"Well, there's no need to look so bloody ecstatic about it," muttered Crowley, rather put out by the fact that Aziraphale was taking such obvious and gratuitous pleasure in thwarting his wiles. "I could have had another commendation in the bag."

Much to Crowley's disgruntlement Aziraphale just started to laugh. He didn't think he'd ever seen the angel so deliriously happy to get one over on him.


End file.
